When certain items are shipped—especially perishable food items—it is highly desirable to maintain their temperature within a predetermined range. Considering the significant variations of temperature that may occur during the shipping process, however, this is often difficult to do. Along any shipping route, a package will experience variations in temperature due to time of day as well as geographic locale. In addition, certain conveyances—such as airplane cargo areas—may subject the package to rather significant temperature extremes.
Other than providing climate controlled shipping environments, the most common way of reducing temperature variation is to employ insulated packaging materials. Among these, the most common is polystyrene based packaging—commonly known by the tradename STYROFOAM. Styrofoam is notoriously bad for the environment, as it cannot be easily recycled, and often ends up in landfills or polluting our oceans. Other insulative materials used in packaging suffer from a similar shortcoming—they are not safely biodegradable, recyclable, or sustainable.
Accordingly in the state of the art of packaging, when selecting materials, package designers are forced to trade between desired insulating properties and using materials that do not harm the environment.
As an example, within the wine industry, often it is desirable to ship small quantities directly to consumers—such as for wine club shipments. In such applications, both pulp-based shipping containers and molded EPS (expanded polystyrene) containers are used. The issue with pulp shipping containers is that they have no significant insulative properties. EPS on the other hand are not recyclable by consumers.
While these units may be suitable for the particular purpose employed, or for general use, they would not be as suitable for the purposes of the present disclosure as disclosed hereafter.
In the present disclosure, where a document, act or item of knowledge is referred to or discussed, this reference or discussion is not an admission that the document, act or item of knowledge or any combination thereof was at the priority date, publicly available, known to the public, part of common general knowledge or otherwise constitutes prior art under the applicable statutory provisions; or is known to be relevant to an attempt to solve any problem with which the present disclosure is concerned.
While certain aspects of conventional technologies have been discussed to facilitate the present disclosure, no technical aspects are disclaimed and it is contemplated that the claims may encompass one or more of the conventional technical aspects discussed herein.